Review – 2016

A lot of bad news this year, not just the deaths of beloved celebrities by the dozen, but one political farce after another made all the more painful by the rising availability of information, and the rampant spread of misinformation and the ever growing tirade of opinion drowning out fact.

But it hasn’t all been bad, and through the constant stream of bad news and doomsaying we’ve forgotten quite a few of the highlights.

In The Media

Leonardo diCaprio finally won an Oscar! Now while this is the death of a punchline it’s an award long overdue for a career full of incredible titles and stirring performances. Ryan Reynolds also achieved a life-goal but his was easily the nerdier of the two, finally getting the Deadpool film he’s wanted for about twelve years.

These days though we’re seeing bigger productions on the small screen than ever. Planet Earth has returned bigger and better than ever, as has Robot Wars which has had one of its most dramatic seasons ever. The shift from television to internet has become increasingly marked, both with the growing success of the Marvel Defenders series, but with new series like Stranger Things and Westworld, but the flow has gone the other way too, with Adam Conover of College Humour breaking into the mainstream media with his series “Adam Ruins Everything.”

It’s also been a year for pretty fantastic game releases, incredible sequels like Dishonored 2, stunning new approaches to old properties like Telltale’s Batman and Pokemon Go, and interesting new titles like Firewatch, Superhot and the massive new face on the scene Overwatch. After World of Warcraft’s foray into the cinema and some promising footage from the Assassin’s Creed with Michael Fassbender we might long last see one more successful union of media before the decade is over. At last, internet, cinema, television and gaming, we may yet see peace in our time!

Tech

This year we teleported data further than ever via quantum paired photons, I may never get over how cool that is but it’s only the start. We’ve seen greater leaps in self driving cars, commercially available and applications of drones and mobile technology this year than ever before. We even slapped a giant tablet screen on a fridge.

This is the year the world agreed to cooperate to work together on greenhouse emissions, and Las Vegas now runs purely on renewable energy sources. These are tremendous steps in the right direction, inadequate but a start nonetheless.

Overall as a species we are better equipped, better educated, and working our way to wards a better future, and after 2016 surely the future can only get better.

But…

Geeks have suffered alongside everyone else this year. The loss of Carrie Fisher most recently, but most notably from fandom circles Alan Rickman, Anton Yelchin, Jerry Doyle, Kenny Baker, Gene Wilder, and Ron Glass have all been lost to us. Stan Lee however, the guy just keeps going! Here’s to another year of cameos from Marvel’s commander in chief.

No, this year has not been happy, but will be 2017 be better? That’s a decision we have to make ourselves, it depends upon what we decide to focus, the doom and gloom or the promise of a fresh new year, filled with promise, in which no one has died yet.

One response

Deadpool was the best live action flick I saw in 2016. Hopefully the sequel won’t suffer from the change of director. I’d love to play Superhot, but for some reason it hasn’t been ported over to the PS4.